all pieces were assembled in winnipeg, canada by aaron funk and rachael kozak.
may 1st - may 13th 2002. every sound was synthesized from their privately recorded
debaucharies committed while on tour in london [england], paris [france], basel
[switzerland], antwerp [belgium] and winnipeg [canada]

hecates rachael kozak has a thing with collaborations. she paired up
earlier this year with lustmords brian williams on law of the battle of
conquest, a visceral, percussive revision of lustmords drone aesthetic.
now shes shacking up with venetian snares aaron funk. literally.
nymphomatriarch, a joint project between venetian snares and hecate, is 100%
composed of sounds the duo made having sex together.

but its not porno music. nymphomatriarch is cutting-edge drill beats
and raucous noise that puts your ears in a vice. the tempestuous breaks venetian
snares is known for spiral down to the very pits of hell and back thanks to
hecates visceral atmospheric treatments, returning as mordant sound meant
to corrode the soul.

nymphomatriarch bristles with the crisp signature of traditional breakcore
dynamics, yet unlike many albums in the genre, nymphomatriarch retains a sense
of complex ambient sound and depth throughout its six tracks - this isnt
just another manic break record composed entirely on a hard drive. in other
words, its everything youd expect from a collaboration between venetian
snares and hecate. nymphomatriarch just happens to be made from sex sounds.

like matmos or ming + fs, nymphomatriarch manipulates conventional found sound
into musical themes. but unlike matmos, who recorded plastic surgery sounds
for their album a chance to cut is a chance to cure, or ming + fs sampling car
doors, windshield wipers, and slamming trunks to produce music for a nissan
commercial, nymphomatriarch employs the noise of anal and oral sex, straightforward
copulation, microphone insertion and other privately recorded debaucheries
committed while venetian snares and hecate were on tour together in europe and
canada last year.

those snapping high-hats running throughout blood on the rope?
ass slaps torqued and looped like madness. the whizzing black noise of input
and outlet? zippers ripping open and clothes flying off. the fiendish
cries and murky ambience overshadowing amaurophilia and hymen
tramp choir? just think about it for a second

or maybe not, suggests kozak when asked about the inevitable hype building
up around nymphomatriarch.

at this point i don't care how or what people think of the album, we
made it for ourselves really, a kind of personal investigation, she says.
obviously people get hung up on the idea of it, but i think when they
actually listen to the record it will be another story.

the creative process that resulted in nymphomatriarch is unavoidably eye-catching
- venetian snares and hecate had sex, recorded it, and made an album. it's easy
to be skeptical about the artistic necessity of projects like this, at least
in terms of their presentation on a public scale. however, the premise in this
case is far too juicy to be written off without being given a chance. as jaded
as our popular culture has made us, nymphomatriarch leaves reign in blood-era
slayer sounding tame and innocent, and that alone merits at least one listen.
hecate is rachael kozak, who first began composing dark electronic music in
the mid-'90s and has adhered to a die-hard diy attitude ever since. she has
released music on zod, praxis, and primarily her own zhark records, which she
founded in 1996. last year saw the release of hecate's first full-length, the
magick of female ejaculation which displayed her penchant for creepy atmospherics
and pounding, heavily distorted breaks. the obscenely prolific venetian snares,
a.k.a. aaron funk, has put forth far too many releases at far too alarming a
rate for any but the truly obsessed to keep track of, on labels such as planet-mu,
hymen and isolate. in the last year or two he has grown into an international
superstar on the post-jungle/breakcore scene (not exactly selling out arenas
yet, but give him time). his superhuman release schedule has drawn him a good
deal of attention, but his reputation owes most of its weight to his creative
touch with faster-than-jungle jungle breaks, as well as his obsessively detailed
and exceptionally dynamic compositional style. the premise of nymphomatriarch
is hard to ignore. the question is whether or not it can hold up beyond mere
voyeuristic novelty, and intellectually speaking there is definitely some interesting
material lurking beneath the triple-x camp exterior. unlike pornography, which
objectifies people (read: women) and dulls the sexual imagination, the music
on nymphomatriarch does just the opposite. sex is transformed and glorified
through the imagination (that this is a collaborative effort is especially important
to this point), and the end result is a sound world that stands on its own and
yet is not alienated from its source. there are no images, thus no bodies to
objectify. the track title "amaurophelia" seems to play on this -
the word can't be found in webster's, but it probably refers to blindness as
a mode of erotic fantasy. perhaps it is a bit of inside information regarding
one of the music's creators, but the word applies at least as much to the listener.
musically, nymphomatriarch is six tracks and a delightful 35 minutes. though
not much attention seems to have been paid to song structure, most of the music
on nymphomatriarch points towards a very clear sense of purpose (explain). all
the sounds are crafted to fall within a well-articulated and coherent sonic
vision, and the sheer number of different sounds used is impressive to say the
least (again, explain). the album opens with the short, ambient "input",
wittily associating hardware cable connections and sexual penetration: it is
a new-age synth tone with a slimy underbelly, chasing its tail around delay
effects through empty space. the sense of unnerving isolation on "input"
establishes a relentless eeriness that underpins the entire album. the percussive
possibilities of sex are surprisingly vast. "blood on the rope" bristles
with trademark venetian snares beats - awesomely fast, delightfully syncopated,
hard, crisp, and programmed in 10/8 time. only in this case the hits sound less
like amen snares than bare skin smacking against skin. providing sonic (and
erotic) juxtaposition to the staccato percussion assault, breathy vocalizations
dart out of the empty spaces, their tonal characteristics heavily emphasized,
while a dirty bass tone oozes slowly along the bottom following no fixed pattern.
the production is quite subtle in many cases, creating a surrealist dream world
that is drastically alien, yet never totally unrecognizable. like "blood
on the rope", "amaurophelia" and "pervs" reflect venetian
snares' compulsive efforts to work outside of 4/4 time. "amaurophelia"
resonates with the sound of bodily fluids, sticky flesh and natural lubrication,
a dubby bassline and a beat that sounds like top 40 r&b in 14/8. all the
beats ring of violence, but "pervs" is especially sadistic. a brief
early pause in the rhythmic onslaught is punctuated by a mumbling male voice
asking, "am i torturing you?" the question gets no answer before the
pummeling beat breaks loose again, interspersed this time not with breathy 'oh's'
but startled grunts and groans that walk a line between pleasure and pain. the
beat drops out for some time and the album's only real dialogue appears in the
mix. the male voice returns, asking, "does that hurt?" this time a
female voice replies, "yes." the fine line is very apparent, taboo
is ruthlessly taunted - the male voice asks, "are you having a hard time
with that?" to which the female voice answers with a "no" that
devolves into thick laughter before the final, most hair-raisingly brutal percussion
assault elicits cries of truly alarming pain. a sense of retaliatory cultural
violence is essential to the breakcore scene, but the violence present on nymphomatriarch
is of a far more personal sort, the vulnerable humanity of its object amplified
by the unshakable control and mechanical precision of the syncopated beats and
sub-bass resonances. this is no conceptual violence - whereas much breakcore
applies distortion to the drums (and everything else for that matter) to convey
its sense of hostile abandon, it is vastly more unnerving to know that the beats
rattling your speakers this time around are made from actual recorded collisions
of flesh. "hymen tramp choir," stretching out at the heart of the
album, is 14 minutes of haunting beatless ambience. it is certainly a surprising
inclusion, in that it comprises nearly half the music on nymphomatriarch, and
if you are the sort of listener who wants the product to be focused, honed,
and refined, with all unnecessary baggage left on the hard drive, you'll probably
find this particular selection a little off-putting. however, it would be my
guess that no one who knowingly purchases this album is easily put off by anything.
in exchange for a bit of patience, "hymen tramp choir" vividly conjures
a shadowy demon's lair filled with unearthly gurgles and a mournful distant
cry that may be a victim or may be the beast itself. unfortunately, patience
wears thin on repeated listening - my strongest criticism is that the album
would feel less like a document, albeit a highly involved one, and more like
a fully realized work of art if this sort of extended, absorbing ambience had
been woven into the beat-driven tracks rather than left as one huge slab lying
in their midst. for fans of hecate or venetian snares, nymphomatriarch is not
to be missed. the first few listens are guaranteed to enthrall, especially for
those who are beginning to want a change of pace from distortion, distortion,
and more distortion. beyond the shock value of those first few listens, there
are indeed more rewards to be had here - though the compositional structures
themselves seem to have gotten short shrift, the source material makes for some
of the most surreal listening of recent memory on a purely sonic level, and
the beats are hot enough to stop you in your tracks the moment they kick in.
if, on the other hand, you are entirely new to the world of post-jungle speed
breaks and are unfamiliar with both hecate and venetian snares, nymphomatriarch
would make for the most bizarre introduction imaginable to the world of two
already bizarre musicians. but who knows, that might be fun too. (jesse serrins)

nymphomatriarch is a collaboration between venetian snares and hecate, who
used, as source material, 'their privately recorded debaucheries committed while
on tour'. now, before any of you run toward your dictionary, "debaucheries"
in simple terms means "fucking". it's an interesting concept, although
those expecting either a cd full of moaning and grunting, or some sort of porno
soundtrack, will be disappointed, as will be anyone who thinks that this will
be suitable music for themselves to fuck to (or otherwise pleasure themselves).
if listened to, without previous knowledge of the source, it would be easy to
miss it; and even with such knowledge, many have complained to that fact. nymphomatriarch
remains a work of both artists, a great combination of both their skills and
sounds. the venetian snares sounds are unmistakable, without, however, the unsettling
aspects of his previous subject matter. obviously venetian snares and hecate's
love life is not vanilla, and the sounds offered on nymphomatriarch convey their
twisted sex life, with a mixture of breakbeats, slow ambient pieces, gurgling
sounds, drawn out moan-ish chords, slaps and noise. but manipulated enough that
we don't have to picture it too clearly, which i think is a good thing. (squid)

many questions arise when you hear that venetian snares and hecate literally
made an album out of sex. am i in a dream? wait, isn't that what this year's
winter in the belly of a snake was made of? when did these two become idm's
j-lo and ben? most pressing of all, why has no one ever thought of recording
sex sounds until now? oh wait, they did: it's called pornography. i think we
can all agree that sex records are always a good idea, in any environs, under
any guidance, with anyone. it does, however, introduce a bit of a problem: the
distinction between art and pornography. although i have a cursory acquaintance
with the decisions of the warren court in the 1950s, it's an important thing
to consider before dissecting this album. am i supposed to be hearing it carnally
as sex with a sort of narrative (including, pant, the climax!)? is it just influenced
by sex? is it sex? like all rhetorical questions, the answer to all is no. the
dilemma inherent in a gimmick like this is that it's only possible to derive
enjoyment from it if you know it has to do with an orgiastic camorra of naked,
shivering techno-bodies rubbing all over one another. the album is composed
entirely out of the recording of "anal and oral sex, straightforward copulation,
and 'microphone insertion.'" but, perhaps unfortunately, this is pretty
close to the standard recording of most pop songs in the last century. you think
elvis was big because of his music? anyone seen amadeus? in a year where madonna
and britney spears are luring ointment into the holiest of each other's crevices
in pepsi commercials, i don't need some experimental glitch/idm freak telling
me how you can make music out of moaning. most of those popular songs are actually
about sex. nymphomatriarch is about melancholy sparseness and irony. sexy? whatever
happened to isaac hayes? the intro, "input", is the mormon tabernacle
put on life support, and i guess about putting a microphone in, how to say,
hecate's "subwoofer." it does indeed sound like shrill moaning and
expanding orifices, but it would be unrecognizable if you didn't get the press
release ahead of time. basically, it just sounds like some inept ambience with
some silly melodic synths. but things do heat up rather quickly. the percussion
of "blood on the rope" seems to be almost entirely composed of the
revelatory sound of ass-smacking, though without any sort of visual accompaniment,
it sounds more like someone masochistically slapping some girl's face at 30
miles per hour than the unleashing of raging lust (unless that's your definition
of raging lust). whether it's successful or not probably depends more on your
sexual preferences than your musical ones. put it like this: it gives a whole
new meaning to the term "drill-n-bass." like the rest of the album,
it might be more seductive if they got rid of the sex sounds. as it is, it doesn't
sound extraordinarily different from playing venetian snares over a hecate song.
nevertheless, between "blood on the rope" and the pummeled bruises
of "pervs", there's some pretty perfervidly maniacal rhythm on this
album. "pervs" may sound more like unzipping your skin than lecherous
intrigue, but whatever, it's definitely got a bite. "amaurophilia"
also really doesn't have much to do with what the common man might call intercourse,
or a commoner man might call "boning hos." the noises are all gravelly
crunching, running faucets, abandoned swing sets in death park. it's probably
about as sexual as any other venetian snares album. i don't know what it does
for other people; it made me cough a lot. these tracks are adequately creative,
with or without the sex, but you wish it hadn't been wasted on a gimmick album.
unfortunately, about half of the half-hour album is dedicated to "hymen
tramp choir", which is basically the intro times fifteen minutes of your
life. it's an incredibly slow, metallic sheen, about as sexual and exciting
as cleaning a sink with brillo pads. of course, for many, this may be more like
sex than sex. but, even then, brillo pads are less expensive than cds right
now. it goes through some gushingly lascivious whispers, but rapidly transports
itself to new age catalogues of waterfalls and phantasmagoric forests before
finally crumbling as a phlegmatic yawn. without this unnecessary tedium, the
album might even reach into the 7's. there are clear antecedents here that i'm
obligated to refer to: matmos' a chance to cut is a chance to cure and herbert's
bodily functions, and probably some of that intellectual porn-lit idm kids are
into, like de sade or sacher-masoch. in a rolling stone interview producer rza
once testified that on a track off odb's nigga please, the extremely irrational
and arrhythmic percussion is actually the sound of dirt mcgirt banging some
girl on top of a bass drum while he's rapping. this is and should be the sound
of sex. piling some fierce and propulsive beats over an echo chamber is not
sexy (not even ironically); it's irrelevant at worst and frightening at best.
(alexander lloyd linhardt)

'... will then be taking off to go and record a new album for the hymen label
with venetian snares for a couple of weeks. we are working under the majestic
name of nymphomatriarch....if you wonder what that will sound like, well lets
just say the basis for the project is to utilize our shared passion for some
of our favorite things, beats and sex......add it up.' (rachael kozak)

venetian snares hard at work on creating entire full-length from his own sex
sounds
steve haag reports:
you've see the nissan altima commercial where jungle brothers ming + fs record
the sound of doors slamming and windows going up and down, then run the sounds
through protools to make a techno song. and you've heard matmos' a chance to
cut is a chance to cure, which was created entirely from the sounds of plastic
surgery. well, electronic funk maestro and pal to the tigerbeat6 krew venetian
snares (aka aaron funk) has decided to sex this g-rated premise up--he's recorded
the sounds of he and his incredibly open-minded girlfriend (rachael kozak, aka
hecate) doing the horizontal trip-bop, and plans to assemble the sounds into
a full-length album. "performing" under the name nymphomatriarchs,
snares and hecate have laid down a handful of tracks for an eponymous release
in early 2003 on hymen records (natch). song titles like "hymen tramp choir",
"pervs", and "blood on the rope" only hint at the timbres
of oral and anal sex, bondage, caning, spanking, and the stomach-turning practice
of "microphone insertion" that provided the record's beats. says funk
in the january 2003 issue of playboy: "it's weird to deconstruct the sounds
of sex. it makes you conscious of a lot of stuff you'd normally ignore. i remember
thinking shit like, 'oh, that slap will make a good snare drum.'" if nothing
else, concentrating on the tonal qualities of an ass-slap should be an interesting
new way for our male readership to forestall orgasm. just don't forget about
her needs, guys. while a full tracklist has yet to be released, it's probably
more fun to make up song titles yourself. here's hoping hecate doesn't dump
venetian snakes, prompting a masturbatory solo album.

playboy. january 2002
aaron funk, who has recorded several cds on the planet mu label as venetian
snares, is on the verge of a breakthrough for electronic funk. together with
his girlfriend, rachael kozak (who performs under the alias hecate), he is at
work on an album created exclusively from samples recorded during sex. "people
i've played it for don't believe it," says funk. "they're like, 'no,
no, no - you've sampled high hats there, i know it.' it's essentially alchemy,
shaping sex into a new form." the couple recorded directly to minidisc
during a european tour and captured the sounds of anal and oral sex, bondage,
caning, spanking and microphone insertion. funk says, "it's weird to deconstruct
the sounds of sex. it makes you conscious of a lot of stuff you'd normally ignore.
i remember thinking, shit, like, oh, that slap will make a good snare drum.
or, wow, that was a freakish set of grunts and moans - i want to make that into
a choir later." so far the duo has completed a few songs - including hymen
tramp choir, pervs and blood on the rope - that play with the genres of breakbeat,
ambient and dub. a full-length cd, nymphomatriarch, will be released this spring
on hymen records. "i like to listen to sex when i'm having sex," funk
says. soon you can hear his sex, too.